My Best Games Final Post: Bonus Compilation!

In this bonus post you'll get to see some other of my games, not my best, but simply those that are interesting to watch. In these ten games there'll be missed chances, blunders in time-trouble, and overlooked tactics all in one. I won't analyze any of them, so you can play through them uninterrupted and analyze them yourself. The goal is for you to understand what happened in the game, why it happened, and what both players could have done better. Instead of analysis, I'll just give a brief introduction to each game. 

I won't spend too much time talking this time, let's get to the games!

1. This game again demonstrates the downsides of slow development. I took full use of the weakened dark squares and mated my opponent on move 15. It started with 1. Nf3 as I was planning to play the KIA, but when he played 1... c5 I accepted his invitation and went into the Sicilian.

2. An Old Steinitz Ruy Lopez. He missed a way I could win a piece early on, but got some counterplay so I had to be careful. I missed a quick way to win, see if you can find it, but the ending was also fine with me.

3. In this sharp Sicilian game I played a thematic knight sacrifice on d5, which he declined. I missed a beautiful queen sacrifice, if you can find it and give a winning line quickly, you have natural talent. I missed quite a few chances but eventually ground out a winning double-rook ending up a few pawns.

4. I played a very dubious queen sacrifice in this game, the computer later revealed it as a blunder, but I got some pressure on his king and it turned out happily for me in the end.

5. Another Sicilian, this time a Richter-Rauzer. I accepted some pawn weaknesses in front of my king in return for an attack, which led to a decisive material advantage.

6. I offered a Danish Gambit although my opponent didn't accept the second pawn, I got the pawn back and we went into an endgame where I sacrificed an exchange for some pawns, and eventually it led to a winning 4-pawns against a bishop ending.

7. A King's Gambit. I lost a piece for three pawns and went into an endgame, but the pawns rolled down the piece back, leaving me up a pawn in a rook endgame. I managed to find a win.

8. A Nimzowitsch Defense. I won a couple of pawns and space, and rolled my pawns over him.

9. A very weird French Defense. I got a lot of space and broke open the kingside for a decisive attack.

10. Yet another Sicilian, a traditional Najdorf. I sacked a piece on b5 for an attack, eventually won the piece back, and won the endgame up five(!!) pawns.

Weird games. That's what happens when you play 10 minute chess! If you don't already, you should try it. It's not so slow that you'll be sitting in front of your computer for hours, but it's not so fast that you don't have time to think. In the future I'll also write about different time controls. As I've said before, chess is interesting because of mistakes!

If you want to be able to see all of the games that I've posted in this series, I made a collection (using chess.com's Library feature) of all of the games. Here's the link:

https://www.chess.com/library/collections/colorfulcakes-best-games-27pF2AvVL

The games aren't in any order.

If you liked this series and don't want it to finish, don't worry! If I play a game that I think would be fit to share with everyone, I will! Also remember that you can send in your games for me to analyze if they meet the conditions that I put up in my previous post. I'll loosen the frequency bar to two games a day since one game every three days seems a bit much. I've already gotten five games from three different people, thank you to all of you for it! All of you who read this, comment, send in your games, and support this blog are the reason that I'm writing this in the first place. So thank you! As I've said before, this series may officially be over, but I'm far from done blogging. 

I hope that you enjoyed reading this series as much as I enjoyed writing it, and the next post is coming soon!